Posted
by
timothyon Saturday August 13, 2011 @05:19AM
from the oregonians-are-next dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Netherlands is testing a new car use tax system that will tax drivers based upon how much they drive rather than just taxing the vehicle itself. The trials utilize a little box outfitted with GPS, wireless internet, and a complex rating system that tracks a car's environmental impact, its distance driven, its route, and what time it is driven as a fairer way to assess the impact of the vehicle and hopefully dissuade people from driving. The proposal will be introduced slowly as a replacement for the current car and gas tax, however it is most certainly controversial and will be a real test of how far environmentally savvy Dutch citizens will be willing to go to reduce the impact of the car."

Isn't this much easier to achieve -- albeit with less accuracy -- via fuel tax? Every time the government here proposes a mileage tax, I can't help but think we already have one. Added benefit of encouraging people to drive more efficient cars.

Yes, fuel tax already does that. However it doesn't differentiate between "good" mileage (the lorries that transport food/goods around) and the "bad" mileage such as driving little Johnny a quarter of a mile to school in the 4x4 every day (and then back again, later).

This system also allows governments to adjust the tax paid by different groups according to their revenue-raising targets/public opinion/congestion reduction needs, in the same way they can target other groups with income and Value Added taxe

Though you've got to wonder what the effect of one individual with a GPS jammer in a city centre at rush-hour would be?

^---- This.

Right now you don't have a choice, if you buy gasoline you pay the tax, but as soon as the government puts the monitoring system in the hands of the people there will be people that will attempt to disable it somehow, and given how poor GPS works in my vehicle and smartphone I'm thinking it won't be too difficult to circumvent.

I know a guy who used to un-plug the wire connected to the speedometer so that the mileage counter didn't increment when he went on long trips. I can imagine people unplugging the antenna of their GPS. Jammers are available but the GPS signal is so weak anyway that you could probably sabotage it without needing to keep something that would act as evidence in court in your car.

Your example of commercial haulage being "good" mileage is interesting. We need to get as much of that traffic off the roads as possi

Yes, fuel tax already does that. However it doesn't differentiate between "good" mileage (the lorries that transport food/goods around) and the "bad" mileage such as driving little Johnny a quarter of a mile to school in the 4x4 every day (and then back again, later).

That's very kind of you to decide whats good and bad to save everyone else the bother. We already have a mechanism to distinguish these: do you value it enough to be prepared to pay the market price? If you can get the market price equal to the cost to society by taxing based on pollution, congestion and so on, why do you need to intervene to crudely categorize 'good' and 'bad' uses? If you're worried about the effect on poorer people then you should instead worry about misallocation of income, not cause de

There's no such thing as 'good mileage' those goods vehicles spit out pollution and wear out the roads. Longer miles means more vehicle wear which leads to more environmentally destructive vehicle repair. And the 'goods' which are not food - how much of those are produced in an 100% environmentally friendly manner - practically none.

Taxing fuel encourages the use of local food produce and lessens the need for road repairs.

Good point about the GPS jammer, I bet those could be put together for a pittance and

100km = 60 miles, unless the gas is significantly cheaper it's not worth spending a few gallons of gas to save 10 cents a gallon.

A neighboring state to me has gas that is about 20 cents more per gallon than where I live because of taxes. If you're within 10 miles of the border it makes sense to come here to fill-up, since 20 miles roundtrip is ~1 gallon of gas and would save about $4.00 in a 20 gallon tank (20 gal * 20 cents = $4).

Remember that the Netherlands has a tiny area.This means that pretty much everyone lives close to the Belgium or German border.Dutch taxes on fuel are currently already extremely high.But that high tax rate is easily avoided by filling up at the border.

The difference in gas prices between german/belgian petrol stations along the border and cheap, unmanned gasstations inside the country is so small it hardly pays to make a 10km detour for it, let alone the 100km+ distance most inhabitants would need to drive.

Yes, and this can't replace the fuel tax, because if it did, The Netherlands would have the cheapest fuel in Europe. Drivers in neighbouring countries would drive there to refuel. There's no border checkpoint. So it would need to be an additional tax on top of the fuel tax.

The article quotes someone as saying: âoeTo do it you need support of the government, and it needs to happen when there is not an election because thereâ(TM)s always a bit of resistance.â

It's not less accurate, it's completely correct. Fuel-based taxation is the perfect solution, and every country I'm aware of already taxes fuel heavily. To add another tax on top of it is either really ignorant (unlikely) or an attempt by the powers that be to further and unfairly lighten the wallets of their citizenry, wrapped up in an "environmentally-conscious" sugar coating. Fighting this unfair tax would now mean that you're an anti-environment reactionary doing the bidding of the dirty oil companies.

The promise is that the amount money flowing to the government remains the same as it is now (or does not increase more that it would without the system). Supposedly people who already drive less will end up paying less tax, while long distance/frequent drivers will end up paying more.

Fuel taxes do a poor job of correcting the externality because they don't accurately reflect the costs you impose on others when you drive. Those costs come from accident risk (minus what you pay for insurance), noise, local pollution, global pollution, damage to buildings, roads and crops, policing, congestion and the worsening of the physical environment, especially in cities. The size of those depends on:

Why yes. The current petrol tax in NL is close to €1/l... I say we certainly have road pricing here already. But from the government's perspective, a fuel tax has one glaring flaw: it can only go so high before even people in the south-west of the country will consider driving to Belgium for gas, driving gas stations near the borders completely out of business.

Now with a scheme that actually lets you charge by the km, the sky is the limit. Great for milking people with no viable alternative to co

The purpose of taxation should be the same as the purpose for which any other government action should be done: to raise the welfare of its citizens. Taxes change economic decisions. If cauliflowers are taxed more than cabbages I may choose cabbages over cauliflowers even if it's better for both me and the farmer if I didn't. All taxes do this; but some do it more than others.

But some economic decisions are already distorted. Taxes (sometimes subsidies) can distort them back the other way. eg, if I drive a

Putting an environmental impact fee (tax) on fuel would be a more reliable compensation for your impact than GPS. If I sit idling in my car for a few hours I can burn an entire tank of gas without moving an inch.

Indeed. The car's location will be known to the authorities 24x7. Combine that with the fact that all your movements with public transportation are soon tracked with the chip-card, and it means that the government knows where you are any time of the day unless you're walking.

It's not about the environment. Not sure why that was thrown in. It's more about traffic management, e.g. if you drive outside of rush hours you will be less than during rush hour. Also KM's within congested areas will be more costly than elsewhere.

That penalty is nowhere near enough. It's the tragedy of the commons: each additional car on the roads during rush hour might cost the rest of the area hundreds of dollars in externalities. That's why there's been so many attempts at finding ways to manage congestion pricing. By tailoring the price to discourage use when demand is high and encourage use when demand is low, you can dramatically reduce the amount of congestion at peak use.

What a smart idea that is. Smart because it automatically gives cheapskates a way to lower their expenses. If you don't want to pay a lot, let your car sit and ride your bike. Use your car only when you really need to haul around a huge hunk of metal. Most cars are empty but for the single, fat driver, hauling their can to work and back. A law like this would have multiple benefits:

You misunderstand the idea. There will be large areas when the system will not bill you while your normal car tax is lowered. If anything, this encourages more people to buy and use cars in those areas. Again, it's not an environmental issue. It's just about getting traffic to stay away from congested areas/hours.

I live in Guadalajara, Spain (the original one). It's got about 90 thousand inhabitants, most of which work in Madrid (about 60 km away).The hospital, where I work at, is 7 min away from here by car. Should I take the bus, the trip lasts 30 min, to which I must add an average 15 min between buses at peak times. Now, that's 45 min against 7, twice a day.If I go to Madrid, it takes about an hour if by train or if by car. But by car I bypass the 30-40' of busing to the train station and also the time limits (I

FTA: Eric-Mark Huitema, a transportation specialist with I.B.M... “To do it you need support of the government, and it needs to happen when there is not an election because there’s always a bit of resistance.”

With people like that, we don't need terrorists hating democracy, we obviously have democracy-haters running the place. Not that it's surprising, but it's even more odious when they're so blatant about it.

He sounds like an engineer working for a private company, not a politician so he's hardly running the place. And how often do we get people here essentially saying "the sheep don't realize their own good, the government should do X even though it doesn't have popular support"? In his mind this system is probably more fair, and everybody wants a fair system right so the people are just being irrational about it, just sneak it in and you're really doing them a favor..

I'm a bit surprised to see this article at slashdot. The plans to have tax on milage (kilometer heffing in dutch) are already existing for a very long time here in the Netherlands. The former government was actually planning to introduce this, but the current government killed the project. So for me this isn't really news.

Further I'm very interested to see how such a system can be made robust. GPS signals are very weak and are easily jammed. One weather balloon and GPS jammer under the balloon will stop tax

The 'kilometerheffing' or 'rekeningrijden', kilometer charge, is a system to replace road tax and the extra VAT (BPM=40%!) on a car. It is supposed to enter service in 2014 but because of non-governance a while back I suppose it is delayed.

How the pricing is determined:-type of fuel-type of engine/exhaust system (no particle filter == 2.5 ct/km)-place of the road (not sure if this in the current proposals)-time of day

The system makes having a car cheap and driving one expensive in congestion areas/time.

The headline and the summary are pretty much completely wrong: as the NY Times article explains, the trial was two years ago, but the government cancelled plans to introduce "rekeningrijden" (GPS-based metered driving) last year. So it's not going to happen anytime soon - unless the Netherlands suddenly gets a left-wing government, which is unlikely.

Trying to get people to stop using cars is basically forcing them to reduce their quality of life... There are simply no viable alternatives to many car uses for a lot of people.

Public transport is useless, its dirty, unreliable, often unsafe, overcrowded (yes i know the roads can be crowded too, but at least you have somewhere comfortable to sit in a car and can stop to take a break), doesn't run all night and is even more useless outside of large cities.

Riding bikes is only practical for short distances, where its not too hilly and where it's safe to do so... This is why so many people ride bikes in holland, the population is densely packed, the ground is flat and there are cycle routes everywhere. In other places, cyclists are expected to share the roads with large dangerous vehicles and aren't allowed to ride on the sidewalk - even if the sidewalk is empty and the road is full of vehicles, thus slowing down the vehicles (causing them to waste more fuel) and increasing the danger for the cyclist.

Taking away people's personal transportation is a terrible thing to do, having your own car massively increases your quality of life and this is not a new thing, having your own horse has done this for hundreds of years and now people are trying to force us to take a massive step backwards.

Lack of personal transportation will force people to live in overcrowded ghettos, since public transport is not profitable/practical without a high population...

I don't see "in the USA" anywhere in Bert64's post. The original article about something which is being considered in the Netherlands. Congestion and pollution by cars is a global problem. Slashdot has an international user-base.

In the Netherlands, there is already very good public transportation. The train grid is dense, and trains run very frequently. Still, the capacity of the train network is only in the neighborhood of 15% of the road capacity. If you want to seriously reduce road traffic, train capacity needs to be doubled, which would be a huge challenge.

Getting you to drive less improves everyone else's quality of life. Since they are all reducing their usage too, your net quality of life improves. It is not a zero-sum game: everyone can win at this.

No, your relative quality of life stays the same because everyone else's is lower too..In fact, if financial penalties are the method of reducing car usage then the quality of life for the poor and middle classes goes down, while for the rich it goes up since they can still afford to drive and will now have empty roads to drive on.

As a counterexample, I offer the entire history of human civilization before 1920.

People had personal transportation before 1920, they were called horses and although not as convenient as cars they allowed individuals to travel higher distances than they could

In addition to taxing based on time of day, for the love of God, put in a $0.10 per mile tax on those in the fast lane. Get the people who enter the motorways into the fast lane, cruise 20 under the limit there, then exit across traffic from the fast lane out of the fast lane. It should be empty for all times other than rush hour. A quick pass then gone. If they are going to do this, then go all the way and use taxes to help enforce the laws about lane etiquette.

I'm in America, but I really don't like this idea. I like the idea of freedom to travel. This discourages people from traveling. The rich should have no issue with this, but for anyone not so lucky, well, this is going to hurt.

Suppose you could use the information from such a system to find a missing child. You would have to do it. Imagine an episode of "Law and Order: Special Minor Child Victims Unit" where the cops are complaining about privacy advocates are blocking GPS info that would rescue a child (especially a blonde blue-eyed girl). Yes, you could get a court order, but there's no TIME for that!

Indeed, and this is because a camera cannot walk about and actually apprehend people. But cameras can be bought from companies who would be very appreciative of a civil servant/MP who authorised their purchase.

Compared against the possibility of receiving a bill at the end of the year for my mileage, I'd rather pay the tax on the gas. At least that way, it's amortized over the whole year rather than a lump sum. Quite aside from that, cars that don't have NL plates still use the roads, and they wouldn't be taxed at all under the proposed system, which is hardly fair to the locals.

The fuel taxes/levies are a constant. This proposed system takes congestion on roads and times of use into consideration. Per the article the drive from Eindhoven airport to the city center(?) costs 5 EUR during rushour. That is a 15-30m drive for something like 10km. Off-peak I can do that trip in under 10m on my bike. In the current system the variable costs for this trip is approx the same for all vehicles alike (when using the same fuel type and mileage): approx. 0.5l of fuel.

The theory is that putting a higher price on driving during rushhour will result in less people on the road at the same time, people that can avoid the rush hour premium will do so. At the same time the fixed costs of owning a vehicle is reduced (yearly road taxes) and the taxes on buying a car should be abolished (BPM http://www.vdsautomotive.nl/en/zakelijk/bpm-calculator [vdsautomotive.nl] ). Overall this would be a more fair system for use based taxation, but the main fear people have is that levies on fuel, the road tax and BPM will remain making driving more expensive. Only a small minority will oppose this for privacy reasons.

As for privacy/tracking: I'm in two minds. If the data is anonymized (only distances traveled are freely accessible, the 'places visited' is separate) and proper court procedures are in place then this *could* help catch an awful lot of criminals.

OTOH, we know that the chances of it being done properly are somewhere between slim and none so we should oppose it.

This sort of system *is* coming though because almost 100% of people are going to switch to electric cars

Who cares if there is no gas revenue for electric cars. It's not like they are actually harmful to anything. Wear on the road is computed based off the axle weight to the fourth power. Comparing them to a semi truck is like worrying about that fly that just landed on your arm, when there is a gorilla sitting on your back.

The electronic toll road was essentially the plan from de late 80's-early 90's. First by numberplate recognition on the highways, later by blackboxes in cars scanned by toll ports. The latest GPS/GSM boxes are to store the information localy and to only upload the totaleds bill. But the justice department already floated the idea that these boxes can be tapped (remote) for detailed information when needed. The same department was slapped when it was found out that ANPR data was being kept and mined for pos

The idea is to make people use less fossil fuel, to conserve driving when possible, and get eco-friendlier cars.

It's so backwards, as the ultimate goal is to reduce fuel consumption, so let's tax mileage?

Of course, when we all have nice green eco-friendly recycleable electic cars with batteries that don't kill 100 square miles of land... then they have to tax something else.. but that's quite far in the future:)

Doesn't easily extend to electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles. And as vehicle efficiency increases and alternative vehicles become more popular, your tax revenue drops while your costs to maintain the roads remains the same. Gasoline and diesel are also used in non-vehicle engines (generators, farm and construction equipment, small engine tools, etc) which would be paying this tax while not contributing to road maintenance expenses.

Taxing actual road use makes the most sense. You can scale it by vehicle weight and class (since fuel use is not linearly proportional to vehicle weight, while road damage is), create residential, commercial and industrial tiers if you want since a heavy truck that gets 12MPG does more damage than a large car that gets the same. It takes the state of maintenance of the vehicle out of the equation (poor fuel economy due to poor maintenance).

If the goal is to reduce fuel use (and I agree with that goal), we should STILL tax nonrenewable carbon fuels.=Smidge=

This accounts for a huge amount of peak-time traffic - and neither employers nor schools care if it costs a bit more to be on the road at 08:30 instead of 10:00, that's the driver's problem. This is revenue raising, pure and simple.

The stated purpose is actually to make road users pay for the roads they use. Fuel consumption does not come into that calculation at all, as fuel consumption has nothing to do with the cost of maintaining roads.

I do have to admire that slippery slope you got going on there though. Freedom yeah! Down with socialism!

Doesn't work (and not just for fuel but for pretty much any indirect charging system). People just grumble, and pay more. When they see the dollars clicking past (or, for things like tobacco, when they see shots of diseased lungs), that's when it has an effect.

So unfortunately while this system is horribly privacy-invasive, you need some form of direct feedback to have an effect on the public. Indirect costs only have a marginal effect on decision-making.

There is a thing called an odometer. It's in every car. There's nothing wrong with requiring a car inspection every year and taxing mileage based on the odometer is a much cheaper and simpler and less intrusive way.

You can buy gasoline across state lines, too, so that is no way to guarantee the money goes to your state. Further, what if your vehicle doesn't use gasoline or diesel? You get to use the roads without helping to pay for them, which is a large part of the problem.

Many states already require odometer reporting and it's a federal crime to tamper with them. Many states also have compulsory liability insurance for car owners. Solution: Have the insurance companies require odometer reporting and include state ta

Not really the fairest way. Cars create very little wear and tear on the highways (They are like 95% of the volume and responsible for 5% of the wear and tear). The two main externalities of cars are pollution which a gas tax can roughly cover, and congestion, which tolls can cover. Per-mile only makes sense where the miles themselves create the externality like heavy trucks and farm equipment.

Probably the biggest cause of wear and tear is snow and ice (freeze-thaw, expanding cracks), and after that hydraulic action (wet weather + tyres). If you have temperate weather and roads with good drainage and a solid foundation, I don't think you should see a whole lot of damage. But the potholes really come out after a cold snap.

In theory, you could have all the processing done in the unit itself. A map of every road in the country, plus the pricing quotas for those roads, would fit on an SD card. The unit could process its location history and simply upload the bill.

That's not to say that it's how it will be done, but it's how I'd do it.

Take off your tinfoil hat. There is no ulterior motive. Trust us. Ok, let's settle on plain stupidity. A fuel tax is a good measure and it takes in account very well the difference between an SUV and a Prius. Setting up a huge infrastructure in an attempt to go from 'good' to perfectly fair is very misguided. Usually it's the old 'because it has flaws it can't be good and it should be removed.' Then all you need is an example, however rare, where the fuel tax can be considered unfair.

And of course once your every move is being tracked every possible use will be made of that data.

I'm not sure taxing essential safety equipment is prudent. With that thinking you might as well start taxing brake pads (people who drive inefficiently will wear them faster). What could possibly go wrong...

We already do tax tires, and tires are already a significant expense, especially in the high-mileage shipping industry.

The CBO already addressed this issue in their report on transportation system tax options. The only concern raised was that there would be a perverse incentive to run vehicles with less axles, which would increase road damage. That could easily be fixed by a twiddle to the tax code for vehicles with less axles than appropriate.

I live 60 km (37 miles) from work. I've had my car (a small efficient Diesel) for over 2 yrs (75.000 km / 46.600 miles) and I didn't have to change my tires yet. The profile on them says I still got a good 20k to go. How are you gonna tax this unless you charge 500$/tire?

"It makes the tax more fair to charge road-users by the mile and the ton over the road"

More "fair" possibly, but not more rational.

It hurts essential car users like couriers, commuters, and so forth, but does nothing to combat lazy people who take their kids 1 mile each way to school in the SUV when they could just as easily walk.

This sort of tax basically says "Yeah it's okay to use your car wastefully, for pointless journeys because you're lazy. But want to be a salesman? want to fill a skill gap in an ar

Yes and like Netherlands, Oregon drivers should be incentivized for smoking weed. Because weed makes you stay off the highway, and in your apartment listening to Steely Dan albums where your carbon footprint is low.

An old school friend was contacted by blackmailers a few years back and they asked for £10000. In return, they said they wouldn't kill his family. He contacted the Police and they eventually caught the people.

There is NO WAY IN HELL he would have a tracker in his car because if anyone was able to break into the system it would make it easier for similar people to track, find, and do god knows what else, to his family. They could _know_ that his car was away from home and his wife's car was at home. They could _know_ that all vehicles were away and therefore the house was empty. And let's not even start to tell me the system is secure because we all know there is no such system!
There are just so many ways the information could be miss-used and abused, when a far simpler way to 'tax by the mile' is to put tax on the fuel.

Tax on fuel: You drive a lot... you pay more. You drive an inefficient vehicle, or drive inefficiently, you pay more. Simple and cheap to setup, and cheap to run.

An old school friend was contacted by blackmailers a few years back and they asked for £10000. In return, they said they wouldn't kill his family. He contacted the Police and they eventually caught the people.

<nit>Well, I'm pretty sure that is extortion not blackmail.. but perhaps he was not in the best mood to care about the difference</nit>

Yes, it was proposed in Oregon. I emailed the elected official that proposes it, and said that he will go to prison if he continues. That seems to have made a difference. I think people in that office recognized that what I said made sense.

The proposal is pure government corruption, partly based on the extreme ignorance of technology of most people who are leaders now. In Oregon, the elected official was given "campaign contributions" from a company that makes GPS tracking devices.

I think this is based on the the standard cart-before-the-horse "How will we get tax revenues when electric cars become common" fear.

Honestly, until we're even within spitting distance of such a scenario, they can safely be neglected. For the next decade or two, they're not going to have a relevant dent in tax revenues. There's no need to do this sort of stuff now when it'll be obsoleted before it's needed, and when at best it's an additional hindrance on the industry.

I'm looking forward to the day where you can not leave your house without being taxed.

In a sense, it's already here. The electricity you use to run your home is taxed, the food you use to run yourself is taxed, the utility connection for your sewage hookup is taxed. Even if you're completely off the grid, growing your own food, running solar/wind generators (we'll ignore the sales tax on buying that equipment in the first place), septic system, well water, don't use a car for transportation, live without telephone or other communications, etc., the property itself is still taxed. It is impos

Why not just tax fuel like everyone else? This messing about with GPS seems ridiculous to achieve such a simple aim.

Not everyone else just taxes fuel. The recognition being that it doesn't affect buying behaviour / consumption as much as it should. Many countries have a motor tax and these days it is usually based on engine size and / or CO2 emissions. The idea is the upfront & and annual financial hit is a more effective way to impress upon people to buy efficient vehicles. It certainly works in Ireland where diesel and small engine sizes are the norm and there is a €2000 difference between the best tax band an

Why not just tax fuel like everyone else? This messing about with GPS seems ridiculous to achieve such a simple aim.

Taxing fuel is pretty obvious. The GPS solution seems a little nefarious and a lot flawed, because they don't achieve anything that a petrol tax doesn't achieve and there is a wealth of other information they could take from it about my habits.

Anything they fit to your car can be modified to report incorrect data, or disabled. When the devices are common because they're mandated it won't take long for someone to figure out how. The same thing happened here with the 100kph limiters for heavy trucks and buses

As a dutchman, i know some background (i didnt know they are back to testing this shit though, it was shot down previously)

Tax is already a significant part of our fuel price, ridiculously so. normal petrol costs $9.10 per gallon right now, but was even higher a few weeks back. One of the rationales for not doing even more fuel tax, is that currently people living near the german/belgian border drive significant distance to fuel up over the border. Raising fuel taxes even more would just make that situation

Electric vehicles perhaps, although then you could just move to taxing tires. AFAIK their degradation is correlated to distance traveled and weight carried. Plus tire wear is probably highly correlated with road wear, which is kinda the point.

We already have a fuel tax, in fact more than 50% of the fuel prices is taxes. But that's not what this scheme is about.There are two goals:1. to combat congestion, by setting a high price for road sections and times where congestion occurs.

2. to replace the current car sales tax (BPM) and ownership tax. BPM and ownership taxes are used to promote clean, efficient vehicles: cars with the lowest CO2 emissions enjoy lower taxes.BPM goes against European regulations so it will have to be replaced eventually. T

You clearly don't live in the Netherlands or surrounding countries.
There is no cheap fuel to get in NL. It wouldn't surprise me if we'd have the most expensive fuel in the world even. Dutch people already go to Germany and Belgium to get cheaper fuel.

Everything else was cheaper in holland, gas has always been cheaper in germany... It was not uncommon for germans living near the border to buy food and such in holland.The Euro has levelled the prices for a lot of things.